I thought this artbook was pretty cool, but about 1/3 of its contents were two-page spreads that had been separated, which took a lot away from reading experience. So, I put them back together, did the usual color/image corrections I would do on loose image files a zipped 'em all back up.
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'Aliens In Space - An Illustrated Guide to the Inhabited Galaxy'
Crescent, 1988, 63 pages
Written by Steven Caldwell
From what I understand the paintings in this book are by a bunch of different SF artist of the '70s and early '80s. Caldwell then writes wholly fictitious descriptions of the planets and creatures in the paintings. Probably intended for a slightly younger reader (the kind of thing that would have occupied my imagination for hours in the days before constant video game playing and computer use), I still found this pretty entertaining (but then, I'm a huge SF geek, which probably helps).